About 2 months ago (March-ish) I did an internet search for government grants for school. I received a call (on my cell phone) from this company "EMMEDIATE GRANTS" offering a "free" packet of information - just pay the postage of $3.85 and in 2 weeks get a big package with information about U.S. Grants for school. I wanted to go back to school and didn't have the money, so I said sure. The lady said I could go on-line to sign up for a monthly service for a fee if I wanted to get the information quicker.
I said no - I don't need a monthly service. Before we were finished with our conversation we were disconnected, but not before I gave her authorization to bill me $3.85 for shipping and handling out of an account I rarely use and had less than $100 in it.
I never went online to sign up for anything. 2 weeks came and went, 2 months have gone by no package has ever come in the mail from this company and I was never billed the amount of $3.85 for shipping that I actually had authorized. Needless to say I had forgotten about the whole thing until I received a notice from my bank that I had been charged $8.51 for an E savings club, $49.95 for a monthly fee to this on-line site and $35.00 worth of overdraft fees. Neither amounts were signed up for or authorized. I went to my bank and cancelled my account and closed the debit card associated with that account. Capital one is currently pursuing the fraudulent charges by this company.
So, anyway today after I went to the bank to see about the charges, I remembered talking to this chick on the phone, so - I tried to look the company up on the internet - Yes they are there, I went to the terms and conditions to find out what the heck they have in the fine print - get this, if you sign-in to their website, you grant them the right to charge you for their services. Thank God I haven't ever signed in, but here's the catch some other unsuspecting person might not notice: in order to contact their customer service online to cancel your subscription (assuming you actually signed up for it in the first place), you have to sign in to the website. If you call the 800 number - It directs you to go to the website and do what? Sign in. I am hoping that since they never billed me the amount they said they would bill me, they have never sent me the information package I agreed to have sent to me and I never signed up for the monthly web-site service or signed on to the web site service, I am truely hoping that these completely fraudulent charges will be dropped.
I am also hoping that the Capital One fraud department shows up on EMMEDIATE GRANTS front steps with a can of WHOOP-A*! Companies like this that take advantage of people should be taken to a high mountain in afar-away land and dropp kicked off a ledge.
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